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Why Google won't let you leave a review for Jiminy Peak

4 points by CamelCaseName ↗ HN
In Dec. 2018, Jiminy Peak posted this [1] employee letter, telling resort employees (often <18 years old) that they would be terminated unless they worked during a state of emergency, and no accommodations would be provided.

The picture of the employee notice was posted on Reddit and Facebook in the following hours, leading to outraged comments from thousands.

Some of those people took to voicing their complaints in a review on Google Maps, and their review count soared from 822 to 1,100+ and their score dropped from 4.4 to 3.7.

Then, the next day, Google froze their reviews and began deleting everything after those 822 reviews.

To this day, their reviews remain frozen.

How did Jiminy Peak get such a quick response from Google while other establishments have had to shut down after a controversy that left their reviews devastated?

Will Google re-enable reviews at some point in the future? For now, Jiminy Peak has locked in a great review score.

Did Google notify reviewers that their content had been deleted? Will it reappear at some point?

[1] https://i.imgur.com/Z0LZPhi.jpg

6 comments

[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 17.5 ms ] thread
yellow_lead
I can only assume Google doesn't want their reviews brigaded by publicity incidents like this.

While I don't think Google always knows best, it does bring up the question of if you were building a review site (i.e yelp or otherwise) if you would permit such brigading. Personally, I think it would be difficult to tell between spam and brigading, so it's best to take this approach.

Zelmor
Bombing Steam/Gmaps is not how you should voice your opinion. That is not the intended use of the platform.
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
0_gravitas
I need to disagree here, what good is a review section if you can only post certain kinds of views about the product? What would the intended use be? I personally think the downfall of review sections in general is the score system. I believe the score systems sort of undermine the reviews themselves. Yet, I obviously understand why they are used and that they are 'useful' for people.
muzani
That's true, but very often review systems are not designed for bombings and fall apart there.

The best design I see for this is something like Steam, which has "recent" and "overall" reviews, which are more resistant to bombings but also allow them. If the publisher screws people on a DLC or IAP, people would want to know, but in some cases, it's just emotional exaggeration led by someone else.

hatboat
I agree with the sentiment that review bombing should not be a way to voice criticism, but the unfortunate reality is that it is used extensively. The line from the article which questions how Jiminy Peak managed to get a favourable Google response when others have been destroyed is a salient one. This becomes yet another method by which the large tech companies exert control through their monopoly on information.